It comes after Pakistani counter-terrorism police raided a militant hideout and killed six suspected members of a Taliban faction that has launched a new campaign of violence against the government, police said on Thursday.

Pakistan Shrine Bombing Kills in Worst Attack in Months

Thu, February 16, 2017

At least 70 people were killed and over 150 others injured when a suspected suicide bomber blew himself up inside the crowded shrine of revered Sufi Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan town in Pakistan's Sindh province, the fifth deadly terror attack in the country within a week.

A man reacts after a suicide bomb attack that targeted the devotees at the shrine of Sufi Muslim saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, in Sehwan, Pakistan

DAWN NEWS

Worshippers had crowded into the Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine when the bomb went off

TWITTER

A suicide bomber attacked a crowded Sufi shrine

Since Monday, several bomb attacks have hit the country.

The Counter Terrorism Department in Punjab province said its officers surrounded a hideout of the Pakistani Taliban's Jamaat-ur-Ahrar faction in the city of Multan late on Wednesday and ordered the suspects inside to surrender.

The militant faction claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack near the Punjab provincial assembly in the city of Lahore on Monday that killed 13 people and wounded more than 80.

Jamaat-ur-Ahrar said the attack was the beginning of a new campaign of violence against the government, security forces, the judiciary and secular political parties.

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Since then, militants have killed two bomb-disposal officers in the western city of Quetta and a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a government office near the northwestern city of Peshawar on Wednesday, killing five people.

Hours later suicide bomber on a motor bike attacked a group of judges in a van in Peshawar, killing their driver.

Earlier today, a roadside bomb hit an army convoy, killing three soldiers in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, the military said in a statement. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

The attacks have underlined the threat militants pose to the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif despite an army offensive launched in 2014 to push them out of their strongholds near the Afghan border.